When I meet people who say - which they do all of the time - 'I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,' and so forth, I switch off quite early.

No one remembers who climbed Mount Everest the second time.

I climbed Mount Everest. I don't quit.

So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.

Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career.

If it is a shame to be the second man on Mount Everest, then I will have to live with this shame.